Google and Ray Kurzweil making chatbots that will allow for “interesting conversations”

Can we really have a conversation with a bot? Voice assistants like Siri, Cortana and Google Now make a good attempt at it, but these are still clearly machines. Their level of artificial intelligence is far behind human intellect. But you can bet Google is working on improving AI.

Renown author Ray Kurzweil has revealed him and his team have been working with Google to create chatbots. These are said to be advanced bots with which you can have “interesting conversations”.

Not much else was revealed, but Kurzweeil did specify one of these would be based off one of his book’s characters – Danielle. But these chatbots won’t be limited to specific personalities. It is said you will be able to create your own AI bots by feeding them significant amounts of text, such as a blog.

The author goes on to mention these will be pretty interesting to have conversations with, but artificial intelligence bots with true human capacities should be expected by 2029. If it all turns out as planned, those robots will be able to pass the Turing test, which means human beings won’t be able to recognize whether they are talking (or messaging) with a bot or a fellow human.

“If you think you can have a meaningful conversation with a human, you’ll be able to have a meaningful conversation with an AI in 2029. But you’ll be able to have interesting conversations before that.” -Ray Kurzweil

We have to wonder what it will be like to have these types of conversations with robots. Will we simply use them as improved assistants? Maybe we could become friends with them. After all, these conversations would reach real human interaction levels. It’s certainly an interesting concept, and we hope it doesn’t result in a machine apocalypse!